


in the deep dark hills

by Nokomis



Category: Batman (Comics), Justified
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Raylan Givens POV, set in a world where Justified takes place in the DCU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26725495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: “Think of Harlan as Kentucky’s Gotham,” Deputy Tim Gutterson informed Jason with no small amount of glee. “And Raylan here’s like the hillbilly prince of it. The Batman, if you will, except he leaves a helluva lot more bodies in his wake. So whatever shit you pulled there, he’s gonna find out.”
Comments: 5
Kudos: 90





	in the deep dark hills

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you have an idea and it won't leave you, no matter how self-indulgent it is. Set at nebulous times for both comics canon and Justified: I had in mind a not-too-far out from Under the Red Hood Jason, though you can mentally set it pretty much anywhere; Justified is anywhere in the middle of its run, really.

Raylan had scarcely set foot in the field office when Art’s voice rang out. “Got a good one for you, Raylan.”

“Shit.” Raylan was coming off a rough night, and Art always had a sixth sense about that. Raylan had considered more than once that Art kept a drawer full of complicated cases to throw at Raylan when he had an inkling that Raylan had come in hungover.

But he put on a smile, tipped his hat, and sauntered over to find out what Art had up his sleeve today.

Turned out to be a good one. A kid -- Raylan couldn’t think of him as anything else, he barely looked twenty -- had been pulled in, armed to the teeth and clearly looking for trouble. But the real trouble was his identity. Nothing came up on the traditional means, so Art had gone to the Dinosaur, a decrepit internetless computer on a closed network that had coughed up names for them in the past, and found something _interesting._

Raylan was all for interesting, just not at eight in the morning.

“Find out what he knows,” Art said. “Find out who he really is.”

So Raylan went to find out. The kid was sitting at a table in the conference room, looking utterly at ease. That was a bad sign -- if he hadn’t been used to trouble already, being brought in before several Marshals would have made him ill at ease. At the very least nervous. But this kid just sat there like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Raylan didn’t like it.

“Good morning, Mr…” Raylan trailed off, hoping the kid would fill in the blank. 

If only. Raylan should know by now that nothing’s easy, especially cases Art handed over with such joy.

“I see, I see,” Raylan said. “Gonna be stoic. I gotta have something to call you, or else I’ll be forced to come up with a nickname.”

A glare, nothing more. “Am I free to go?”

“You haven’t been here but a minute,” Raylan said. “Don’t tell me our hospitality’s already worn thin. Now, we ran your prints.”

Nothing; clearly a smug expression lurking behind that. “What can I say? I’m--”

“--Jason Todd, presumably,” Raylan interrupted.

 _That_ provoked a reaction. Not a big one, mind, like Raylan would have figured, but there was a widening of the eyes that meant that the name wasn’t unknown and that the kid didn’t exactly expect to hear it.

Huh.

“Not guilty of that,” the kid said. 

Raylan waved the report, the name Jason Todd clear at the top. “Then mind shedding some light on who you actually are?”

A tensed jaw. “Fuck off, asshole, or I’ll--.”

“Son, I want to make clear that I don’t know or particularly care why you’re sitting there with a dead boy’s name and prints, but I’m going to have to kindly remind you that threatening a federal marshall is, in fact, a crime.”

The boy didn’t seem to mind; Raylan got the distinct impression that he spent a good amount of time living outside of the law. He decided to go another route. “You got people?”

A grimace in response that Raylan was all too familiar with, but at least he wasn’t cussing Raylan anymore. 

“I see,” Raylan said. “Are they the disappointments, or are you?”

“Little bit of both, depending on who’s doing the talking,” the boy admitted. He immediately clamped his jaw shut, but Raylan’s seen him for who he is, now. The boy’s a talker, keeping his mouth shut because of the whole law enforcement angle. Raylan leaned against the doorframe, surveying him.

“I was also the family disappointment,” Raylan said conversationally, tilting his hat back. “The law came between us. My daddy’s always been more interested in staying on the wrong side of it, and here I am, dedicating my life to enforcing it.”

A smirk, as though the boy’s thinking of something ironic. “Not interested in talking about my _daddy_ , sorry.” His tone lilted upward on the word, mocking Raylan. Raylan didn’t mind; he’d heard worse from worse.

“What are you interested in talking about, then?” Raylan wasn’t deterred; he’d seen that what he was saying was hitting some sort of mark with the boy. Just had to figure out what that mark was.

“Discussing when the hell you’re gonna let me out of this podunk town, for starters.” The boy crossed his arms over his chest. He was muscular, no doubt about that.

“Do you play ball?” Raylan gestured towards him. “With your build, you’re probably a, what, linebacker?”

“Nope,” the boy said. “Still just interested in when you’re letting me go, since as you said, I can’t be who your computer thinks I am.”

“Oh, I think we’ll be keeping each other company a wee bit longer,” Raylan said. “While we sort out this mess. Not everyday a dead kid sits there sulking in our conference room, after all.”

“Not sulking, and I sure as hell ain’t dead.” Finally, a touch of an accent came through his clipped words, and it’s that sharp-edged Gotham accent that one heard so rarely in Kentucky. Raylan might not have recognized it at all, if not for a few memorable jaunts into that particular city that he’d had.

It tied the boy to the name the Dinosaur had spit out for him. The Dinosaur was a relic sitting in Art’s office; it had lost all internet capabilities some five, six years ago, but had retained all the databases, and was surprisingly reliable in getting hits on prints that the more modern machines insisted were unknown. Raylan didn’t like to think about what that meant about the reliability of their data and how often it was manipulated, but damn if it wasn’t handy.

“No, son, you aren’t.”

“Not your son, either.” The words were practically spit out at him; Raylan had definitely found that exposed nerve he was prodding for. Fierce eyes met Raylan’s directly for the first time, and there was something there that reminded Raylan uncomfortably of Gutterson. That too-old look of someone who’d gone to war too young, the sharpness of a sniper, the steadiness of someone who knew how and when to pull the trigger. 

Shit. Was the kid some sort of former black ops child soldier? It lined up with the brief details of Jason Todd’s mysterious so-called death half a world away, and Gotham wasn’t exactly known for being a hotbed of human rights. 

Raylan was absolutely the wrong person to handle this. He thought about cutting his losses and leaving right then, finding Rachel and letting her finesse the situation, or, hell, finding Gutterson and telling him he found him a goddamn soulmate, but the kid was skittish enough as-is and Raylan wasn’t going to risk turning his back and letting him run.

Because he was pretty sure that the kid’s casual body language meant that he didn’t consider himself actually detained, just inconvenienced. 

Raylan sighed and took off his hat, setting on the table between them as he took a seat. “I’m not going to ask you questions that you’ll just lie in response to,” he said, “being as that’s a waste of both of our time. So, Jason, what are your intentions here in the great state of Kentucky?” He put enough heavy sarcasm in the phrase so the boy — who he was just going to accept as the legally dead adopted son of a billionaire Jason Todd — would actually respond. 

“Nothing felonious, if that’s what’s got you worried.” Jason said. Raylan couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t deny the name; Raylan wasn’t entirely sure he’d fully realized that he’d responded to it.

“You were mightily heavily armed for someone who didn’t have ill intentions.” 

Jason pursed his lips, an expression that would look out of place on a disapproving granny looking at what her family intended to wear to church. “Where I was headed, it’s better safe than sorry.”

Raylan narrowed his eyes at that. “I’ve been all over these hills and haven’t needed half that.”

“Knock, knock.” Raylan looked up to see Tim Gutterson in the doorway. “Art sent me to make sure the suspect was still alive and breathing.”

“I haven’t shot him, Tim, look. Sidearm still in the holster,” Raylan said.

Jason looked interested. “Was I in danger of getting shot?”

“Raylan here is a bit notorious for thinkin’ he’s out in the wild west,” Tim drawled. “He didn’t challenge you to a duel, did he?”

“I’ve never challenged anyone to a duel,” Raylan said. “You know I don’t like giving ‘em a chance to draw on me.”

Jason let out a surprised burst of laughter.

“So Art sent me in here to babysit,” Tim said. He slouched in a chair and directed his question towards Jason. “You aren’t planning on starting up a fight, are you?”

“Do I look like the type that starts fights?” Jason said, faux-innocent.

“No, I reckon that you’d consider yourself someone who finished them,” Tim said. They stared at each other for a long, long moment, the steady, keen observation of a sniper on both ends, and Raylan saw Jason’t hand twitch, as though he wanted to reach for a gun he didn’t have. Tim saw it too.

Well. Raylan already knew this kid was trouble. Tim broke away from the staredown first, turning to Raylan.

“Got anything yet?” Tim was casual, barely glancing at Jason, but Raylan knew him enough to see how tense he was. He saw the boy as a threat, too. 

“Well, not much, beyond the fact that we got ourselves a ghost here.” 

Tim raised an eyebrow. “As in…”

Raylan pushed the paper he’d printed showing that the kid’s prints matched the infamously dead Jason Todd.

“Huh,” Tim said. He wadded up a spare sheet of paper and tossed it at Jason, watching it bounce harmlessly off his shoulder onto the floor. “Seems solid enough. You’re not going to projectile vomit goo at me, are you? Aim for Raylan if at all possible.”

“I’m not dead,” Jason said; a mite sullenly, if you asked Raylan. The sniper-sharpness was gone as quickly as it’d emerged.

“Well, you’re also not blown to smithereens, so bully for you,” Tim said, setting down the report on what, precisely, had befallen a teenage Jason Todd. 

Definitely a sullen expression.

“Well, ghoul boy, we can either wax poetic about your status among the living or you could tell us why the hell you were picked up loaded for bear?” Raylan wasn’t hopeful that Jason would give up any info that easy, but it was worth a try.

“We haven’t even gotten into the zombie jokes,” Tim added. “We can do this all day.”

Jason didn’t seem inclined to say anything.

Raylan and Tim exchanged a look. “Maybe we should hand this over Rachel,” Raylan said. “She’s got that patient soul.”

“Rachel’s dealing with some Harlan nonsense,” Tim replied.

This was news to Raylan. “Good, keeps me out of that hellhole.”

Jason let out a little snort, like he agreed.

Tim and Raylan turned their heads towards him, hawk-like. “You been to Harlan?” 

Jason was obviously thinking shit so clearly that Raylan could almost hear it. He declined to answer.

“Think of Harlan as Kentucky’s Gotham,” Tim informed Jason with no small amount of glee. “And Raylan here’s like the hillbilly prince of it. The Batman, if you will, except he leaves a helluva lot more bodies in his wake. So whatever shit you pulled there, he’s gonna find out.”

Jason surveyed Raylan, and said, “Well, shit, if you’re the hillbilly Batman…”

Raylan was going to absolutely make Tim pay for that. “Not how I would characterize the situation, but Deputy Gutterson here’s a bit of a creative thinker.”

Tim gave him a shit-eating grin. 

“But he’s right in that I absolutely will find out what business you had in Harlan, so you might as well save us all the time and effort and just tell me directly. Save me a trip out there and save you some time behind bars.”

Jason was very clearly projecting that he didn’t see himself as being put behind bars anytime soon. Raylan honestly didn’t care, so long as he told them what the hell he’d been up to and Raylan was done with this whole mess. It was too goddamn early in the morning for this.

They all stared at each other a few more minutes, then Jason sighed and shrugged. “I got better things to do than sit here all day,” he said. “I was after a wannabe super villain that took off with some of my shit.”

“A wannabe super villain in _Harlan_?” Tim sounded delighted. Raylan gave him the stink eye, but Tim elected to ignore that. “Raylan, maybe you should take a page out of Batman’s book. You could be Possum Man.”

“No, absolutely not,” Raylan said, to both Tim’s ridiculous suggestion and Jason’s equally preposterous story. “I'll accept dead boys showing up and mouthing off, but there will be none of that masked nonsense here. We don’t need to give those idiots out there any ideas of grandeur.”

Tim coughed pointedly; it sounded suspiciously like “Crowder” but Raylan ignored it. 

Jason smirked. “I hate to tell you but some of your dumbasses already have delusions of grandeur.”

Tim said, “Sounds like he’s met Boyd.”

“Boyd Crowder is not getting into the business of supervillainry,” Raylan said with certainty. “He might have the monologuing down pat but he’s just not fashionably adventurous enough for the calling.”

Jason seemed to realize that they might be an important source of information. “The dumbass I’m looking for is calling himself Gator Boy.”

Silence.

“No,” said Tim.

“Please, god, let him forgo the spandex,” Raylan said. He didn’t think his eyes would ever recover. 

“Idiot doesn’t even have the decency to call himself Gator Man,” Tim said. “Unless he’s set himself up as a sidekick? Maybe he’s working for the mythical Florida Man.”

Raylan looked heavenward. All he saw was the flickering fluorescent light. 

Jason grinned. “You have a likely suspect, I’m guessing?”

“Was he wearing a gator tooth around his neck, by any chance? Unfortunate hair? Dumber than a box of rocks?”

“That would be him,” Jason said.

“Dewey Crowe,” Tim offered. “We’ll take him in. Thanks for the tip.”

“Tip?” Jason shook his head. “This is my—“. He seemed to remember who he was talking to and shut up. 

“If you think we’re letting a suspect free to catch another suspect…” Raylan said. 

“Yeah,” Tim chimed in. “Did you ever dig coal with Raylan? Because that’s the only way that sort of nonsense happens in this office.”

Jason wrinkled his nose. “Is that a euphemism?” 

Tim cackled. Raylan thought he was getting entirely too chummy with the kid. He almost missed the tense stare-downs. “Come on, we have a jackass to catch.”

He spared one last glance at Jason before he left the room; he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to be there much longer, no matter what the Marshal service had planned. Raylan thought that probably it was a good thing, as he didn’t have any real desire to get messed up in whatever caped nonsense this kid was involved in.

It would be pretty easy to connect some dots, after all, involving a resurrected child who moved like a soldier, a billionaire, and the things Gotham was most famous for, but Raylan had no intention of following up on any of that. Kentucky’s problems were more than enough for him. 

No sense making himself a target for more, especially now that he was pretty sure of which side of the law this kid was working for.

That didn’t mean he didn’t have any advice, though. “Hey, kid.”

Jason looked up; Raylan was pretty sure that he’d already undone the ankle cuff they’d put him in.

“It’s real easy to justify pullin’ a trigger, but don’t let it get so easy it takes you away from people who care about you. That mutual disappointment you mentioned? You can get past that.”

Raylan didn’t want to say more, not when he wasn’t sure about the dots he’d connected, not when he didn’t particularly want to admit what he knew. But some things ought to be said.

Jason nodded, a brief thing, though Raylan doubted he’d heed the words. Raylan wouldn’t have, when he was a younger man. But maybe Jason was a different sort of man.

He sure as hell lived a different sort of life.

Raylan had an idiot to arrest. He left without looking back, knowing that the kid was absolutely going to be gone when he got back, whether or not Art had permitted it.


End file.
